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Twitter's 'Bond Girl,' who commented on Detroit and other muni matters, identifies herself

A Kentucky official has identified herself as Twitter’s “Bond Girl,” an anonymous tart-tongued commenter on Detroit bankruptcy and other municipal bond matters with more than 8,400 followers.

“I changed my name on my account,” Kristi Culpepper, who heads the Kentucky School Facilities Construction Commission, said Tuesday in a telephone interview from Frankfort, the state capital. “I felt like it.” Culpepper declined further comment. Her almost 24,000 Twitter postings began disappearing Tuesday.

Bond Girl, using the Twitter handle @munilass, had been posting commentary about state and city borrowing and issues beyond public finance since April 2011. Her sometimes-pointed posts attracted the attention of municipal-bond investors, bankers and analysts. Using her nom de Twitter, Culpepper sparred with other users, criticized public officials and vented about her life.

“The loan should allow the city the flexibility to extend the maturity so as not to put the city at risk of locating a replacement lending facility if its bankruptcy and recovery do not reflect the ambitious trajectory that the emergency manager is selling,” she wrote.

Culpepper “is regarded as an authority on capital projects and debt by the Legislative body,” according to a Kentucky Education Department website posted in November that announced her appointment. “She has worked with legislators, lobbyists and attorneys to draft legislation and effect policy changes related to the state’s bonded indebtedness.”

Culpepper, a member of the Junior League of Louisville, has undergraduate and master's degrees from Baylor University, according to the site.

Buyers and traders in the $3.7 trillion muni market had puzzled at the true identity of Bond Girl, said Hector Negroni, co-founder of New York-based investing firm Fundamental Credit Opportunities, in a telephone interview.